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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28533711">Ecstasies of the Sewn Tongue</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isabelle_Saphir/pseuds/Isabelle_Saphir'>Isabelle_Saphir</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Gratuitous Smut, Omegaverse, alpha camilla, judith is a fucking cop, nonconsensual application of necromancy, omega corona, skeleton hand</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:55:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,435</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28533711</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isabelle_Saphir/pseuds/Isabelle_Saphir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Coronabeth and Camilla fuck. The rest is window dressing.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Camilla Hect/Coronabeth Tridentarius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Ecstasies of the Sewn Tongue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is lewd. Don't read it if you don't like lewd stuff.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They’re having a fight, again. Judith is being recalcitrant, again. She’s gotten worse since they saw Harrowhark, since Camilla returned with a hand that, impossibly, appears to house the soul of her necromancer. “Your sister is a lyctor, Tridentarius,” Deuteros says. “A <em>lyctor</em>. One of the immortal saints of the King Undying—”</p><p><br/>“Don’t talk about my sister,” Coronabeth snarls. She can see the Sixth tense beside her. “Don’t you <em>dare</em>. She’s still alive. What can you say about Marta? You left her to blee—” It’s her turn to be interrupted, this time. A familiar sensation, as her jaw fuses, as her teeth blend together. She can feel her tongue cleave to the roof of her mouth. She tries to restrain the panic. She can’t. And then Camilla Hect is there. </p><p><br/>“Stop,” says the cavalier of the Sixth House. There’s a scuttling sound as a skeletal hand skitters toward Coronabeth and clambers up her leg with ease. The absurdity of it is almost enough to make her laugh. She can’t laugh. She can’t speak. She whines, afraid, and Camilla spares her a look. It’s enough to calm her, for now. She can smell Camilla on the air. Not pheromones. The cavalier is too controlled for that. Resolute, determined, implacable as gravity. </p><p><br/>Judith raises her hands. “There’s nothing left,” she says. “I’d intended to use it on you, Hect. A failure of composure on my part. But I’ll admit it’s satisfying seeing the Princess of Ida quiet at last.” The hand is on Corona’s shoulder, now. It taps her chin, then her cheek.</p><p><br/>“Where’d you get the thanergy?”</p><p><br/>“A small death from a planet. It’s kept. The dirt is in a pouch. Have your ‘necromancer’”—the scorn is obvious—“examine it.”</p><p>The hand hops off of Corona and scuttles to Judith. There’s a pause. Camilla nods, then. “Undo it.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Camilla Hect walks forward until she’s eye to eye with Judith. “Undo it.”</p><p>Judith adopts some sort of parade stance and fixes Camilla with her own level gaze. The stalemate is broken by Corona whimpering.</p><p>“Go back to the brig,” Camila says. Judith leaves. The hand skitters off to attend to its own unknown devices. Camilla sighs. “Are you all right?” she asks Corona. </p><p>“Nnhgh,” Corona says. She feels tears well in her eyes, and she hates herself for it.</p><p>“Come here,” Camilla says. “Lie down.” Corona goes to the bunk. She lies down. There’s a soft pressure on the bed as Camilla joins her. “You’re shivering.”</p><p>“Hmmngh. <em>Nhnnn</em>.”</p><p>“Settle down. You’re safe. I’m here. Do you need calming pheromones?”</p><p>The casual tone with which she offers it stuns Coronabeth. Few can withhold their scent. She’s never heard of anyone emitting specific scents on command. But Camilla Hect doesn’t brag. She doesn’t need to. There’s a long pause. Corona is afraid. She wants to be calmed. But she wants more than calm. She wants—she wants a lot of things, she realizes, then, as she lies there, Camilla’s arms wrapped around her. Things she thought she only wanted when she was deep in her cycle. She wants Camilla to stroke her hair. To stroke her body. To…</p><p>“You’re making this hard, Tridentarius,” Camilla says. Her voice is tight, and it’s only then that Coronabeth feels the glowing warmth between her thighs, how she’s pushing herself up against the sixth house cavalier, how the air of the shuttle has become suffused with the scent of her desperate longing. Corona turns just as Camilla gets off the bed. “We’ve had this discussion. Not while you’re—”</p><p>Corona scrabbles for the nearby flimsy. NOT IN HEAT, she writes. She shows it to Camilla, who raises an eyebrow.</p><p>“Prove it.” She snorts at whatever she sees on Coronabeth’s face. “Get control of yourself. Don’t let the drive rule you. Are you a princess?” Corona stiffens. Camilla smiles thinly. “<em>Prove it</em>.”</p><p>Coronabeth Tridentarius is many things. Wet with desire. Wordless. Swimming in pheromones. But above all: Coronabeth Tridentarius is the heir to the Crown of Ida, and she gets what she wants. Even if she has to jump through a few hoops. She sits up, takes a deep breath. And then another. And then another. Minutes pass. The fear fades. The desire fades, in part. She can still smell herself on the air, but it’s not animal, anymore. Not an omega desperate to rut. She’s banked the fire inside her, for the first time in her life, and now it blazes white-hot and controlled. She looks up at Camilla in astonishment, and the glitter she sees in the alpha’s eyes almost shatters her composure.</p><p>“You understand,” Camilla says, as she sits next to Coronabeth. It isn’t a question. Corona swallows, then nods. “And what’s your decision, Princess?”</p><p>“Hnnn,” Corona says, having forgotten momentarily the small problem of her jaw fused to her skull. She blushes. Nods again.</p><p>“Write it out,” Camilla says.</p><p>Corona writes it out neatly. I WANT YOU.</p><p>“All right,” Camilla says, and she begins to take her clothes off. “We start without pheromones.” She catches Corona’s expression, and repeats herself, this time with a note of steel that sends a shiver down Corona’s spine, detonating between her shoulders, within her core, between her legs. “We start without pheromones. You want this?” This is on display, now—brown skin, taut muscle, a trail of dark brown hair that starts just below her navel and leads nearly to Corona’s complete dissolution.</p><p>YES, Corona writes.</p><p>“Then you listen to your alpha, Princess.”</p><p><em>Your alpha</em>. Corona hasn’t felt that feeling before. And then Camilla is taking the flimsy and pen, saying “You won’t need those,” and whatever that feeling is is magnified a hundred-fold. Camilla places her hand against Corona’s cheek. Her palm is cool and dry against fevered, sweaty skin. “I said we start without pheromones, Princess. Get yourself under control.”</p><p><br/>Corona tries. She concentrates, and she manages, barely. She manages enough so that she knows who she is, who Camilla is, why she wants this so badly and the myriad reasons it’s a terrible idea. It might even be her that decides she wants it anyway, and not her ruined limbic system, blazing in glorious wreckage as her anterior cingulate cortex burns in the all-consuming flame that is her lust for the cavalier of the Sixth. She nods. She can feel sweat trickling down her face. Trickling down her chest.</p><p>“Yes,” Camilla says, as she unbuttons Corona’s shirt. Corona feels her skin pebble as the sweat is exposed to the chill air of the cabin. And then Camilla is on top of her, her mouth on Corona’s, tongue brushing against fused teeth. It’s an entirely unsatisfying kiss. Corona curses Judith in her mind. Then the kisses go lower, down her neck, between her breasts, down between her thighs. Camilla takes a small bit of Corona’s inner thigh between her teeth, applying gentle pressure. Not enough to break the skin. She repeats the process on the other thigh, and Corona realizes, with a thrill of lust and a surge of terror, that Camilla Hect could bond her, right here and now, and that she’d have nothing to stop it. No medicine to break the process, once started. Camilla moves her attentions to the space between Corona’s legs, then, and the princess stops thinking at all.</p><p>It doesn't make sense, it isn't fair that the Crown Princess of Ida should be reduced to this--wordless, whimpering, writhing under the hands of some no-name Sixth House cavalier. And she can't blame the pheromones. Camilla taps Corona's cheek with her hand. It's not quite hard enough to be a slap. </p><p>“Get yourself under control,” she says, again. Corona tries again. She tries, and there's a moment where her mind floats above the haze of hormones, where she sees Camilla Hect for exactly who she is, not some ill-bred scion of a failing house, not some erstwhile cavalier, but as the scalpel that will tease every nerve from the quivering flesh of Coronabeth Tridentarius.</p><p>Camilla can hear the quiet gasp, can see Corona's widened eyes. Corona knows this, because the glitter returns to the too-grey eyes. </p><p>“Good job, Princess,” Camilla murmurs, and the sheer nonchalance of the title in her mouth is enough to send Corona right to the spasming edge. “Are you ready?”</p><p>Corona nods. Camilla smiles, and as she bends down to brush her lips against Corona's own, she whispers, “then come for me, Princess.”</p><p>Corona expects to buck. She expects to arch her back. She expects to scream. Instead, she's pinned to the mattress, Camilla's lips on hers, the ragged scream torn into the shreds of a pitiful wail by a sewn tongue and fused jaw. And then she smells Camilla. The scent rolls off the alpha and breaks upon Coronabeth, and Coronabeth breaks with it. She's shattered, torn apart like a hapless traveler caught within the Sixth House's raging winds.</p><p>She can't kiss the woman on top of her, not how she wants. She moves instead to press her face against the crook of neck and shoulder, gasping in the scent, breathing it in until it fills her from trembling foot to half lidded eye. She's permitted this, for a time, but then a hand is in her hair, against her scalp, and she looks into steel grey eyes.</p><p>“Do you trust me?” asks the alpha, and she nods, dazed, before the hand is moving her, moving her down, down against the side, down to the crook of waist, then up, up, up, to where arm meets side, and the only scent is the alpha, vast and endless as the stars themselves. She loses herself completely, there. She feels the sheer strength of the alpha moving gently against her flesh, moving in ways that make her sob desperately into the sweat-slick skin of the woman who is slowly breaking her apart. She hears herself wail, beg, scream wordlessly. She moves and cranes her neck, showing off the spot where the alpha will bite and make her her own. </p><p>And then the impossible happens. For the second time in her life, Coronabeth Tridentarius is told no. She’s told it in the rough-calloused hand that moves over her neck, told it in the way the alpha growls deep in her throat, told it in the way she’s turned over on the bed and made to come again and again. She screams fury and lust and grief into the pillows.</p><p>When it’s over, after what seems a myriad itself, Corona lies there silently, eyes hot with a feeling she refuses to think about. Camilla lies next to her, wordless. The silence stretches. Eventually, the cavalier says, “You feel rejected again.” It’s not a question. It’s a blade through her heart, just like the blade that her twin refused to use on her. The blade her twin used on <em>Babs</em>. Part of her knows, now, that for Ianthe to claim her as her cavalier would have meant Corona’s utter annihilation, an oblivion from which there would be no recovery. Part of her is grateful to Ianthe. Part of her hates her sister more than ever. Corona doesn’t realize she’s crying until she feels Camilla’s arms wrap around her.</p><p>The cavalier is holding Corona against her, and she's rumbling. Another thing new to the princess. She's heard alphas growl before, with lust, or anger, or—after what before all this she'd have called “a long fuck”—contentment, but this is something different. This is almost a purr. Possessive. Comforting. Corona feels very suddenly that the most dangerous place in the universe is here, in this hold, for anyone who is not her. The rumble dies away, and she shifts to look up into Camilla's eyes. They're a different color, now. She shivers.</p><p>“Don’t be afraid, Princess. The Warden is ready to fix your jaw.” The cavalier pulls up the long-since abandoned sheet so that it can cover both their bodies; Coronabeth instantly hears the scuttling sound to which she has slowly been growing accustomed. The skeletal hand hops onto the bed and taps Corona once, briefly, on the lips. Pain sears through her head as tooth tears loose from tooth, tongue rips free from flesh, and she gasps in a half-shriek. But then Camilla is rumbling again, holding her again, and Corona feels the pain fade as she nestles in the alpha's arms.</p><p>“How?” she whispers, in a hoarse rasp. Camilla smiles. This time it reaches her eyes. Corona feels her heart flutter.</p><p>“We have grave dirt of our own. It only took a bit of study. Now hush, Princess.”</p><p>Coronabeth subsides and is almost asleep before a thought occurs to her. She pulls herself up until she can stare into Camilla's eyes once more. “Camilla?” Camilla raises her eyebrows. “How long did it take your necromancer to figure out—” Camilla’s kiss is warm, soft, and entirely too heady. When it ends, Corona feels lightly fuzzy. Camilla smiles again.</p><p>“Sometimes, Tridentarius, it’s nice to see you wordless.”</p><p>Corona flushes. “You could ask.”</p><p>“I ask about the important things,” Camilla says, the smile still playing across her face. “Do you want me to ask about that in the future?” </p><p>The idea of <em>that</em> happening again in the future makes Corona shiver with emotions she is entirely too tired to place. She rests her head on Camilla’s chest. She thinks. “I would be okay with it happening. With you. If you keep making that noise.”</p><p>Camilla purrs, and it’s to that gentle, comforting safety—a safety she has never felt before—that the Crown Princess of Ida falls asleep.</p><hr/><p>Camilla stands at the doorway and watches the breath fill Coronabeth’s lungs, in—and out—and in. There are smudges of sweat on the face that have mixed together with helpless tears.</p><p><br/><em>Someday</em>, says a voice in her mind, <em>I think you might bond that girl</em>.</p><p><br/>She looks to her shoulder, where the skeletal hand is perched. <em>It might be good for her</em>, she says back, through the link the two have begun to share. She closes the door quietly behind her; she approaches the bed. <em>Now, a little privacy, Warden</em>. The hand leaps off her shoulder and scuttles into a vent they’ve left open for this purpose.</p><p><br/>Corona stirs briefly as Camilla lies down beside her, but the princess doesn’t wake. She murmurs to herself in sleep and curls up against Camilla, molding herself against the woman’s side. Well. Cam can work with that. As she drifts off to sleep herself, she hears a voice right of the edge of thought and sound.</p><p>
  <br/>
  <em>It might be good for us all.</em>
</p>
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